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- You can mute the self-checkouts, my precious little battered sausage.
- I'm ecstatic.
- Civilisation has really gone up a notch.
- You never stopped striving for justice.
- I have decommissioned my ballistic vengeance.
- I am delighted beyond belief.
- I can process my bargains in beeping serenity.
- I am a ten-floor four-star hotel of satisfaction.
- And do you know what else?
- I have no knowledge of anything at all in this world.
- The security hawk has ended his campaign of unreasonable scrutiny.
- I am smashed by a joyful hammer.
- Our dreams have entered reality by the medium of triumph.

Keeping In Touch

The new exciting lunch facility is worth a visit mate yeah. At the entrance you're given a disposable tunic. At the exit you're hosed down and congratulated by a woman with a tattoo of a pricey cupcake somewhere on one of her legs. Before the exit you sit at a picnic table, attacking strips of gifted carcass with your hands and teeth, euphoric slop squirting down your neck and wrists, thinking about Europe.

Quite Some Rush

I am ferociously excited to announce a big new thing:

A 16-page book and 7" record package, being a three-voiced written, illustrated, soundtracked-and-jackanoried seasonal story, entitled Tinselsnakes and featuring the vocals of B. Dolan, the music of Buddy Peace, and the illustrations of Sarah Inkymole Coleman.

Right now the audio's a free download, and as soon as someone punches the big green button in the pressing plant, the whole package'll be available, for yourself and your friends and your children's children's children, etc.

The website is here. It has details.

The people if y'didn't know:

B.Dolan did this about houses and this about names.

Buddy Peace did this about Tom Waits and this about pudding.

Sarah did this about To Kill A Mockingbird and this about Copper Gone.

I've admired all these people for years and it's amazing to hear and see what they did with the words.

As soon as the whole thing's available I'll crash a foghorn into your life. Until then enjoy the audio and thanks and thanks again for your time.

To Be A See Also

Here is a few slices of what we did last Christmas. (It's still basically August and you're going on about December already are you, you rotten bollock, while we still owe the butcher a grand for the outdoor meat marathon, and the pineapple wallah's got his wide tangy blades at our necks twice a day saying pay up for Pina Coladamegeddon or I'll really set the fucking juice loose? Sorry. I just wanted to share.)
This Christmas we've formed a cross-continental task force to assault all eleven of your seasonal senses and you'll be like Christ that's nice. In the meantime the rejections from agents make me feel like I'm progressing with the second book, while the third book is still a festival of detritus awaiting a suitable container. I really appreciate you putting these things in front of your eyes. Thanks.

Preservatives Common

Two reassurance-faced women on either side of a flipchart kept thanking people for sharing. I was one of the people. I wasn't sharing. I was eating. The Pret A Manger Chicken Caesar sandwich is a sandwich I can rely on, believe in, and demolish, provided its bread has been baked in a way that maximises the crunchiness of its outer layer, removing the need to say "and some crisps please," when is-she-so-friendly-because-we've-done-this-so-often-or-is-she-so-friendly-because-I-might-be-the-monthly-mystery-shopper-who-affects-both-the-staff's-annual-bonuses,-if-they-have-those,-and-the-store's-standing-in-the-various-regional-leagues-and-graphs-they-quite-probably-have-to-refer-to-every-morning-or-at-least-every-week asks, at the till, if it's to have in or to take away and if, besides the Coke, there'll be anything else. The filling has never varied in consistency or emphasis, so I guess the section of the kitchen in charge of middle bits is a well-oiled hellhole, whereas the bread must be part-baked, then frozen, then activated in-store by early-morning enigmas with variable preferences and vendettas and physical indications of substance abuse, in unfamiliar or inconsistent ovens, resulting sometimes in a less-than-robust outer layer and the need to say "and some crisps please". Anybody who's ever worked in or ram-raided a Pret A Manger please let me know. A man on anti-depressants said "you really must try some."

Eye Balm

London, london, listen, an exhibition, Mail Me Art, loads of excellent pictures on envelopes from all round the world and I have some words on one too and they're all for sale for charity and the show is 30th July to 3rd of August at the Framers Gallery W1T 2JT Goodge Street tube or Tottenham Court Road tube or put rollerskates on a horse and get there on that, as long as you get there.
Inf: http://www.mailmeart.com/
Purch: http://www.mailmeart.com/product/ed-garland-original-mail-art/

Jaws

In St Ives there are crowds in thin lanes and when a bus goes past everybody faces the wall. We are looking at the sea and through gallery windows at pictures of the sea. Tiny dogs ride around in handbags. A few of the shops sell fudge, and one of these shops is very keen to let you know, in an underlined and laminated sign, that the fudge on offer there is in no way affiliated with any of the fudge on offer elsewhere, you got that? All the other fudge is full of broken glass and lies. The fudge game must be no joke round here, many a life having been torn to sweet tatters by the retailing of inferior fudge under the superior name of, I forget what this shop is called. I hope they can find peace before any blood flows into the sea.

Giedra finished. I’ll miss her. Jose Saramago arrived, beeping and jiggling, with his Blindness. It has funny bits, at first, dollops of ha-ha in the worsening squalor. (So far, that is, by page 109, who knows how it’ll progress. The outlook is not good.) I like that Jose doesn’t have time for speech marks. 

I’m at a table on a balcony. Having spent an hour looking at the sea and beach to the east, it might be time now to spend an hour looking at the sea and beach to the west. If I close one eye and tilt my head a bit, I can make my nose replace the land on the other side of the bay, and the waves trundle up it and it tickles.

By page 173 there’s no more room for joking. Maybe the jokes went in at the start to make the eventual lack of jokes seem more serious by contrast.
A sign advertising boat trips lists one of the destinations as Hell's Mouth (no mention of death’s door). For booking information phone Derek. Now I’m in a craft beer/hot dogs type place. You know: a Ruby Jean’s Burger Garage, a Betsy Turnpike’s Chow House, and it has a balcony with a good view of the harbour and the bay and the hills and the balcony I was on earlier. David Gray or oh god it might be James Blunt is playing, and I’m pining for Motown. I could run and launch myself, wailing, off the balcony and over the road and into the water.
Out in the bay a rumour of dolphins emerged and was blown into Derek’s ears and out of his mouth, opposite, but nobody’s biting. I’d like to see a dolphin but he hasn’t offered to bring one to me, and I don’t want to end up in Hell's Mouth, I’ve been there before and only a fool’d go back on purpose, and now The Killers are playing, Jesus, put James Blunt back on.

In between these balconies I walked to Carbis Bay, the next one over, behind the hill my nose was, it was big and quiet, blue and beige, you know what a beach looks like. At the back of it a man sat drinking rose (ay, rose-ay, where's the button for e-garnish on this Mac?) from the bottle, a pink umbrella obscuring his face, but you could see a grey cone of beard tickling his chest, and three small dogs sat watching him.

I’m facing east again. Soon it’ll be time to face west.

Oh here’s Jack Johnson, my life is fraught with invisible peril, won’t be long before Laura Marling’s here, this soundtrack doesn’t seem to go with the hot dogs and craft beer experience, shouldn’t we be having Huey Lewis or a Bill Cosby monologue or something, why’s nobody consulted me on this, it’s as if they don’t value my many balanced opinions at all.

It must be time to go elsewhere. This pint is reluctant to disappear, I don’t know what the music is now but it’s obviously meant to induce contentment, which I’ve always found obnoxious, like a stranger squeezing your hand, here’s Redemption Song, it’s time to go. 

Sufficient Clarity

What it is is it's a bewildering life-enhancement arrangement situation's totally re-booted my crikey unit and I haven't had a chance to re-register my interest in whatever it is this is until just now, hi. I filled out a spleenful of forms and sent them off to all three bureaucracy distribution capitals, which I needn't name for your benefit, thoroughly sick as I'm sure you are with the return addresses below the seals of the ogre-hair envelopes that contain the foghorning bold already-known unproofread news concerning whatever it is you've haemorrhaged this month. Come round for some cheesecake, is what I'm saying, and we'll bother ourselves senseless about nothing of any consequence and maybe I dunno touch each other on the upper arm once or twice, christ we can dream. Yeah, so yeah.

Within Working Days

A thing continues not to happen. It's up to me how often it hasn't happened because I find out whether or not it's happened by checking my email. So lots. For a while I was checking it fifteen times a day. Although I hadn't heard the new message ding I thought one might've snuck in while I was thinking about all the insurance I'd have to get for all the stuff I'd be able to afford if the email contained the right kind of news. And then I started imagining I'd heard the ding while staring into the potato cupboard or rearranging the cobwebs in the bedroom. And I'd hurtle to the computer but the thirteen thousand unread emails hadn't turned into thirteen thousand and one. And I'd leave the house and trudge up hills and waddle along ridges and plod down slopes and pinball through copses and springbok over trenches under overwrought javelin rain, hearing the ding come out of passing cars and handbags and tanks twenty times a minute thinking one of these must be a sign, and I'd get home and towel off and microwave a plate of the dauphinoise of the week and kick open the computer, drooling, and the number at the top of the leftmost tab'd read thirteen thousand and one, and I'd click on it, and there'd be an email from someone I'd never met, asking me to throw woe at an overlord to raise its awareness of a disease bonanza or boring old massacre, and I'd eat the dauphinoise thinking things are bound to get better.

Associated Slice

(Stop going on about it). If you bought one thanks very much. I'm working on a downloadable version to appease our robot overlords and by working on I mean intending to work on, after the weekend, it's important to have something to dread while retching yourself awake at the stench of Monday's dawn-crevice and just because I'm between jobs doesn't mean I'll be going without, and by dread I mean pleasantly expect. If you'd like to borrow a physical one because you've run out of ways to get your hands filthy you can do so by moving to Bristol and visiting bloom & curll. It should be in the cupboard at the back where he keeps all the local things. Unless after reading it he decided to put it in some kind of capsule and bazooka it into the graveyard. I haven't checked. You might find James Collett's diaries there and that will be excellent also. Anyway go there and buy a book. And while you're at it stop being told what to do. Or don't, I'm not the leisure-sheriff, normal service will be exhumed when I remember where I've put it.

New Marrow Blimey Fanatic

You should see what they've done though. Jesus it's unspeakable. The furniture. You sit on a couch and the table's higher than your head. And when the food comes it's an extra quid for the use of a lunch-funnel. And christ the sandwiches, leather and brasso and toenail mayonnaise and eight quid for a bowl of chips and they're not even chips. The service is exceptional but y'know. Afterwards you need at least two showers and a good solid discussion with yourself. I would stop going only it's on the way home from the new place.

No Doubt Note

They made a pool of jelly for a famous boat to float on. It was green and people came to say blimey at it. It was the most jelly that had ever been directly underneath a boat. At night they illuminated the whole imbroglio. It wasn't edible. I didn't see it. I didn't research the second sentence of this entry at all. But it's probably quite accurate and who's checking? Right. My town briefly had more jelly outdoors than yours. I think that's something we can all agree on and intensely care about. I missed it all gladly in a faraway field watching a handfasting. The hands were fasted and drinks were had. Music was flailed to and a hot hog gobbled.

2

Yes it was and yes he was. Schemes aplenty, that man. Schemes for breakfast, plans for dinner. No lunch. I was doing my best to not get involved. Reckons his mate's invented a new soft drink. Was asking for startup cash, basically. Told him I'd have a think. Who drinks those, these days?
No I wasn't wearing my invisible hat. I put it down somewhere and can't find it now. Reckon it was nicked. If I ever see anyone wearing it, there'll be litres of trouble.
Odd to hear the kids disapprove of your wardrobe. Maybe it's a sign when they're older they'll make some sense. Which will look strange to you, if you're there to see it. When was the last time you built something for them? Do they still have that big iron thing? With all the snouts?
Shuttlecock turned up hopping and grateful and worried in his overalls, talking like an ant's nest, all kinds of subjects, I couldn't really follow. But yes, told him a couple of things from my experience, and to not bother praying.
The book is nearly there, it's myths and maths and called "□" and is rabid. An advance is yours as soon as it's been swept for errors one last time. I'll put it in the cannon and shoot it at your face.
Odd thing: The Ministry of Happy Endings got in touch. I thought they'd shut down. They'd mistaken me for someone else, though. They invited me to the Nicequake. Disgusting, hey. It produced an instant shimmering flashback. The grinning, the beans...why did we do it? I blame and forgive you.